Our planet is burning from human-made climate catastrophe, and we need to join together to confront this. Dear Everything is about the power of solidarity and it gives us the anthems we need for the job.
Glory Ride is the story of Tour de France champion Gino Bartali. Bartali was a legendary Italian cyclist who opposed the fascist regime of Mussolini. In a time when few spoke out against the dictator for fear of their lives, Bartali was openly critical.
For Monty Python fans, this stuff is ageless and forever witty. The show opens with an in-joke for true fans—a narrator announces that the show is set in medieval England, but then the lights come up on the ensemble doing a song about Finland, 'The Fisch Schlapping Song,' complete with prop fish and slapping, which is framed as a brief misunderstanding.
After the world shrugged at The Knowledge in 2017, someone told Tilbrook: 'Nobody is interested in a Squeeze record. What matters is Squeeze's story.' That stayed with me, he says. So not only does Trixies contain a story—it's a concept-album-cum-musical about a fictional nightclub—but there's also a great tale around the album. It was written when Difford and Tilbrook were teenagers in 1974 but left unrecorded because they couldn't properly play the songs they had written.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, in a tender production from Foothill Music Theatre, understands what it means to be the underdog. The musical is a tribute to the awkwardness of being different, kids who read the dictionary with urgent ferocity. But behind the competitive spirit that comes with devouring Latin and Greek roots are stories of kids who overcompensate with the hope of being normal.
The beloved creepy, kooky and hilarious characters came out of the fertile imagination of American cartoonist Charles Addams. Having retouched photos of corpses for True Detective magazine may have contributed to the macabre characters he later created for The New Yorker, appropriately dubbed The Addams Family. His cartoons attracted the attention of television producer David Levy, which led to the successful television series.
I loved his music then and still love his music, said Westenberg, 72. I listen to (the music) nearly every day and I don't get tired of it, Westenberg added. There's a reason he was the most popular performing and recording artist in the world for so many years. He was a seminal part of my life, and I have massive associations with his music, and affection for it.
I Can Do That! Performing Arts Center begins 2026 with the high-energy show Newsies, the Musical, Jan. 16-25 at Walnut Creek's Del Valle Theatre on 1963 Tice Valley Blvd. Inspired by the real-life newsboys' strike of 1899, Newsies features music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Jack Feldman and book by Harvey Fierstein. Set in turn-of-the-century New York City, the show follows Jack Kelly and a band of young newspaper sellers who rally together to stand up against powerful publishers and fight for what's right.
The musical, based on the bestselling book by R.J. Palacio and the award-winning movie of the same name, follows Auggie Pullman, a young boy with a facial disability making the transition from home school to public school. In doing so, he navigates the challenges of being seen as different by peers who both embrace and reject him. The musical also explores the perspective of his older sister in a family whose rhythms have revolved around Auggie's medical needs.
Celebrating old and new works, two more companies open their seasons this month. In celebration of its 20th anniversary, Third Rail Reportory is revisiting the first show it produced, in 2005, Craig Wright's Recent Tragic Events, while Corrib Theatre has commissioned a work, Stilt, by award-winning playwright Joy Nesbitt. Meanwhile, former Fertile Ground producers continue to flourish this fall. Jed Sutton (What the Fox?, 2025) and Ariel Bittner (Mountain Woman, 2025) are joining forces with Maddy Schultz this month to present, three short plays onstage at Ethos Music Center.
They get him to pronounce the names of farm animals, move onto flash cards with important proper nouns like "Champs-Élysées" and "Great White Way." He adopts a BBC-ready accent-he's been watching a lot of Masterpiece Theater-but still stumbles through until his father takes him aside and feeds him the blood of a rabbit. Suddenly everything clicks: "I think I've got it!"
Down the street, Oklahoma! is premiering, a debut that for Hart (Ethan Hawke) stings. His longtime collaborator, the composer Richard Rodgers, has made it not with Hart but with his new songwriting partner, Oscar Hammerstein II. Six months from this night, Hart will die from pneumonia after spending a cold night passed out outside an 8th Avenue bar. He was 48.
The Songbook Sundays concert series created and hosted by Deborah Grace Winer, will continue October 5 at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club with a celebration of the work of Leonard Bernstein. Entitled Tonight, Bernstein, performances are scheduled for 5 PM and 7:30 PM. Interpreting the work of the late composer and lyricist will be Tony winner Karen Ziemba, Hamilton favorite Sydney James Harcourt, and Simona Daniele. The evening's music director is Tedd Firth.
The lyrical register of pop music demands imagery that's direct and broadly relatable, the kind of message that can be easily understood over a thudding bass line. So too does gospel, where the communion arrives not on Saturday night at the club but at a service the next morning. In either case, the roof might get blown off, and in a moment of mass worship, you're able to believe for a few minutes at a time in a collective euphoria.
The Los Altos Stage Company presents Cabaret, one of the most iconic musicals in American theater history. With music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff (which in turn was based on a play by John Van Druten and a novel by Christopher Isherwood), the musical debuted on Broadway in 1966 and was later adapted into the 1972 film, which won legendary director-choreographer Bob Fosse his first Oscar.
Sweet Charity is a timeless musical that captures the essence of love and hardship through the story of Charity Hope Valentine, a taxi dancer in New York.
I don't think that the system broke down at random; I think it broke down in response to more colleges creating more B.F.A. programs, not because they were equipped to have those programs, but because they thought they would be cash cows—and they were.
